Helmut Marko believes that Red Bull and Max Verstappen will need just two or three wins out of the eight remaining races to wrap up their respective 2022 world titles.
Verstappen heads into his home race at Zandvoort this weekend with a massive 93-point cushion in the Drivers' standings over Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez, while the Milton Keynes-based outfit is 118 points clear of its rival Ferrari in the Constructors' championship.
After Verstappen's dominant win last weekend in Spa, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner vowed to keep the momentum flowing and not succumb to complacency.
"You have to keep the pressure on because as soon as you don’t, you start making mistakes," said Horner. "So we will approach Zandvoort with exactly the same discipline that we have done every grand prix so far this year.
"There’s no additional activities for Max compared to a standard grand prix weekend. Of course, there’ll be an awful lot of noise around the circuit, but we’ll try to keep him within a bubble, obviously inside the team and to try to manage expectations."
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Marko admits Verstappen and Red Bull aren't home safe yet, but a 2022 coronation is hopefully nearing.
"The good thing is we don’t have to win every race," said Marko. "If we see we can’t win, okay, we go for points.
"There are still eight races to go. I believe we have to win two or three more to be safe in the championship."
Marko pointed to a strong performance in qualifying at Zandvoort to help the team set up another strong result.
"At Zandvoort, you have to qualify very well, because overtaking is very difficult and you don’t know what the weather forecast is, if it’s windy, or if there’s sand on the circuit," said the Austrian.
Verstappen's dominant display last weekend in the Belgium Grand Prix came despite the Dutchman starting 13th due to an engine related grid drop.
"We knew already before the break that we would change the engine here and thought, ‘okay, let’s at least try to get points’," commented Marko.
"But after the qualifying lap we thought a podium should be possible, but Jos said, ‘No, he will win’."
With nine wins this season under his belt, Verstappen is four victories short of equaling the record season tallies of 13 wins held by both Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel.
Vettel also holds the record for the most consecutive numbers of wins achieved in a single season with nine victories achieved on the trot in 2013.
Marko suggests that Verstappen's current dominance in F1 is similar to Vettel and Red Bull's run of form back in the day.
"We haven’t seen dominance like that since then," he said. "This time, we have strong opposition.
"With Vettel, we mainly raced against Ferrari, one year against McLaren but here we race against Ferrari and Mercedes, so we are satisfied, and we are really proud."
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